Carry on, my Doctor
by Kinners
Summary: Rose was safe. But she was gone. The Doctor is despondent. With Rose's departure fresh in his mind, he loses sight of all the good he has done. All the good he has yet to do. He wants the impossible to happen, for Rose to return to him. He needs an Impossible Girl.


September 2, 1701, 12:04 AM.

The Tardis whooshed into existence atop a grassy, moonlit hill, ancient pines sheltering shadows around its crown. A man, wearing foreign clothes too modern for the era, burst out of it at a blind run, face twisted into the bitter grimace of loss. So heedless was he that he tripped, rolling down the hill and shattering his glasses before tumbling to a halt at the base of the hill. Sniffing as he sat up, he removed his broken frames and tossed them wantonly among the shards, trying to blink away his tears as he watched the moonlight play with the prisms. Despite the beauty of the refracted light, he couldn't bring himself to appreciate it. He felt numb, forced himself to be numb, because if he wasn't it would hurt too much. But it wouldn't last. He knew it.

Rose was safe.

But she was gone.

He started sobbing, quietly but uncontrollably, too fraught with grief to try and hide his shameful tears. So there he sat, like the little lost child, letting Earth's moon quietly observe him in his agony. How long would he live on like this? Forever. On and on, throughout the unfeeling stars, breaking hearts and steadily crippling his own two. There were no more immortal beings like himself to hold his hand. So why did he bother? What could possibly be worth such pain?

Though he didn't know it, he was about to find out.

"Are you okay?"

He brought himself to look up. Standing over him was a girl of about twenty years, concern knit in her brows. He vaguely remembered that he was in the late 1600s-or was it early 1700s? He didn't think it mattered. He'd just had to fly away, to somewhere simpler, where the world would possibly be kinder to him. It appeared that he had guessed correctly for once. She knelt down, carefully brushing away the broken glass without question. She wore a long, rather plain teal dress, the sleeves rolled back for efficiency's sake. Her brown hair fell in a waved curtain, bangs cut short over soft brown eyes. She took his head in her hands and lifted his head so that he had to look her in the eye. His eyes, so bright with the fervor of hope before, were dampened with sorrow. The effect would be heartbreaking to anyone who had known those eyes. Known and loved.

She would know, eventually. But not yet.

"What happened?" she asked calmly, as if she truly thought she could help this strange, otherworldly man that had just walked out of a blue box. Maybe she could.

"Gone," he choked, throwing to the wind any attempt to make sense. "Rose. I saved her, but she's gone. I'm never going to see her again."

Just as he felt himself beginning to lose control, she pulled him towards her and, on base instinct, gave him a hug.

She enveloped him in her arms, holding him as she would her own brother. His crying continued, more openly than before, more powerfully. He wasn't just sad-he was bitter. Angry. Confused. Longing. All these emotions he poured out of his soul, desperately purged from himself as he would water from a sinking ship. But he couldn't go fast enough. The more he cried, the more he tried to console himself, the more he remembered Rose. Her presence was too fresh in his mind, her voice still ringing in his ears. The wound still wept, not yet a void like so many others left in his heart by those before her, and so did he. It didn't have to be about Rose anymore. She wasn't the only one he'd lost. All his old companions, all the Timelords, all those he'd loved. All gone, all reduced to faded memories, all loved just enough to still hurt him. After all these years, all these emotions bottled up inside. He wouldn't take it anymore, he couldn't. Not with the knowledge that he had come so close, that she could have still been with him if only he had been more careful. More caring. He missed her so much, and she'd only been gone mere minutes to him. His world was ending, and he didn't know how to make a new one. Didn't remember. And so he cried for all the years, all the ones he'd lost. All at once. Unknowingly, the girl held him, rocking the Timelord slightly in an attempt to calm him down. She didn't need to know why he was sad. She needed only to help him.

"Shhh, sh-h-h," she chided, stroking the back of his head. She pulled back slightly to look at him again. It was apparent that her sympathy had helped-though there were still saltwater rivers to envy those of Kythox VI coursing down his face, their flow seemed to be ebbing, and was controlling his sobbing into small hiccups and whimpers.

"If she's still alive, she can't be completely gone," she reasoned gently, careful to keep her tone soft. "There's got to be some way to contact her, at least. You're clever, I can tell, surely clever enough to figure something out. You haven't lost her yet."

He nodded noiselessly, now breathing with some regularity. Her simple wisdom spoke to him through the maelstrom of his emotions, like an anchor holding fast to its ship. She smiled at him kindly, rising to her feet and offering him a hand.

"Come on," she said. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, wondering if all was not lost. Wondering if hope could still be found in these battered hearts of his. She wasn't Rose, that was certain, but she still seemed to know him. To love him. So many people cared so much about him...Rose had been that way, too. She had loved him. She was going to stay with him until the end of her rope.

Would Rose want him to be like this?

He took her hand and rose, taking a deep-but still shaky-breath. He gazed at her with equal parts unbridled thankfulness and hazy wonder.

"Thank you," he whispered, unable to trust himself to a voice of greater volume. "I...I needed that. I think I have for a long time."

"Sometimes a good cry is healthy," she agreed, hope brimming in her eyes like tears had brimmed in his so many times before. "Especially for a man like you."

He allowed himself a small chuckle. They stood there in silence for a long time, the night somehow warmer and less aloof than it used to be. He looked back up the hill at his Tardis, already beginning to form a plan in that fantastic brain of his.

"Well, I'll be going then," he mused sharply, bending to pick up his broken frames. Holding them up to the moonlight and squinting, he scowled at the now useless bit of plastic. "Shame, that. Brand new pair. But on the bright side, it looks like I'm back to first-world problems."

They laughed a little more, though both felt awkward to varying degrees. She decided not to complicate things, and he decided that he was grateful. Waving back at her with a smile, the Doctor started up the hill back to his mystical blue box, feeling immensely better for their meeting. Exhaling inaudibly, the girl turned around and was about to walk away when a small, almost trivial thing caused her to turn around.

"Oh, I forgot," she called up the hillside. By now he was more than halfway up to his blue box, but nonetheless he turned around to acknowledge her. "What's your name?"

"Oh, I'm the Doctor," he replied, smiling as if at an inside joke with himself. Still, he wasn't ready to move on yet. He could guess where she was going with this. "And that's all you need to know, miss. And you are?"

"Clara."

Nodding at each other, the two parted ways for the final time. Her final time. As he walked up, he couldn't help but wonder at what she had said, how she had seemed to..._know_ him. Remember him, almost. The way she comforted him, so naturally... At the Tardis' doors, he turned to look back at her for the final time, but she had vanished. What had she said, again?

_Especially for a man like you._

"Nah," he dismissed himself, not letting the notion that had blossomed in his mind get any farther. Not possible. Why trouble himself with more heartbreak so soon, with his current one unremedied? Swinging open the doors, he walked back into his beloved ship. He and Rose weren't finished yet, not if he had any say in it. Back to work. But why did he still have that nagging feeling that she wasn't just Clara?

* * *

The following morning, Clara the Orphan was burned at the stake for accusations of witchcraft.

A man in a brown overcoat and glasses walked up to her, threw a black rose at the burning rod's base, wiped a tear from his eye, and walked away.


End file.
